"palace" hotel, may be pardoned for unflattering generalizations. He gradually learns, if he remains in England, that the relation of hotels and restaurants to the life of the country is here essentially different from what it is elsewhere. It may be said, generally, that such places, at their best, represent the maximum comfort of the community. The traveller in England must teach himself that they represent the minimum, and he must learn the further lesson that "English comfort"--the comfort which, as I said just now, is known and venerated all over the world--means, strictly, the maximum comfort, the privilege, of a small minority, of the opulent and luxurious class. To make good inns and good restaurants there must be a comfortable _bourgeoisie_, for people of great fortune are able to do things in a way that makes them independent of a public fund of entertainment. It is to this public fund of entertainment that the desultory stranger in any country chiefly appeals, especially in summer weather; and as I have implied that there is little encouragement in England to such an appeal, it may appear remarkable that I should not have found London, at this season, at least as uncongenial as orthodoxy pronounces it. But one's liking for London--a stranger's liking at least--is at the best an anomalous and illogical sentiment, of which he may feel it hardly more difficult to give a categorical account at one time than at another. I am far from meaning by this that there are not in this mighty metropolis a thousand sources of interest, entertainment and delight: what I mean is, that for one reason and another, with all its social resources, the place lies heavy on the foreign consciousness. It seems grim and dusty, fierce and unbeautiful. And yet the foreign consciousness accepts it at least with a kind of grudging satisfaction, and finds something warm and comfortable, something that if removed would be greatly missed, in its heavy pressure. It must be admitted, however, that, granting that every one is out of town, your choice of pastimes is not embarrassing. If it has been your fortune to spend a certain amount of time in foreign cities, London will seem to you but slenderly provided with innocent diversions. This, indeed, brings us back simply to that question of the absence of a "public fund" of amusement to which reference was just now made. You must give up the idea of going to sit somewhere in the open air, to eat an ice and listen to a band of music. You will find neither the seat, the ice nor the band; but, on the other hand, faithful to your profession of observant foreigner, you may supply the place of these delights by a little private meditation upon the deep-lying causes of the English indifference to them. In such reflections nothing is idle--every grain of testimony counts; and one need therefore not be accused of jumping too suddenly from small things to great if one traces